Download Like many music lovers, I first came to the music of Shostakovich

Shostakovich: a survey of the keyboard music
by Colin Stone
Like many music lovers, I first came to the music of Shostakovich through his
symphonies. As my love for his music grew I started to explore other parts of his
output and, as an aspiring pianist, I was particularly curious to know his works for
piano. I had hoped to find an oeuvre similar to that of Prokofiev’s where the piano
takes a central and formative role. But a quick glance through the catalogue of his
works reveals the piano to be the poor relation of the symphony and string quartet.
Given that Shostakovich, like Prokofiev, was a prodigiously gifted pianist this may
seem surprising, but it does seem to confirm some of the commonly held views about
the two composers’ different approaches to composition. The one consolation is that
what the piano music lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality.
The best known works involving the piano are the two concerti, the Piano Quintet and
the second of the two piano trios. The works for piano solo are less well known. The
first of the two piano sonatas (Op.12) was written within a year of the First Symphony
(Op.10, 1925) but while the Symphony shows the influence of Mahler, Hindemith,
Stravinsky and others, the First Sonata is altogether more radical. In many respects
the Sonata, cast in a single movement, is virtually atonal, and shows the young
composer’s openness to more radical composers from the West---Bartók and Berg for
example. The work has an extraordinary manic intensity and, by all accounts, was the
perfect vehicle for Shostakovich’s own steely pianism. According to Elizabeth Wilson
(Shostakovich, a Life Remembered) the composer succumbed to a creative block for
the best part of a year after composing the First Symphony, before writing the Piano
Sonata and the Ten Aphorisms for Piano Op.13. Given the stylistic chasm between
the Sonata and the Symphony, it is tempting to question the normally accepted
reasons for Shostakovich’s later stylistic volte-face at the time of the Fifth Symphony,
“a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism”. His musical instincts after the First
Symphony took him towards a more dissonant and neurotic world. The Second and
Third Symphonies and the operas (Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and The Nose) show, in
different ways, the more radical side of his output. Yet, both then and now, it is the
more conservative First and Fifth Symphonies that achieved most success and
popularity both within the Soviet Union and in the West. By contrast, the more radical
works were the focus of increasingly menacing attacks in Pravda and even from his
colleagues in the Composers’ Union.
If a composition for the piano can be said to have initiated a period of conflict then it
could be argued that, in a small way, the piano was involved in that period’s
conclusion. The Fourth Symphony was the last significant composition prior to the
“Soviet artist’s reply”. It had to wait a quarter of a century for its first performance
and is only just beginning to be accepted as one of Shostakovich’s greatest
achievements. The reasons for the withdrawal of the work from its first scheduled
performance are still the subject of dispute. The conductor Fritz Stiedri shoulders
some of the blame, by turn accused of being uncooperative and incompetent. There
was also pressure from the Leningrad party organs and the director of the Leningrad
Philharmonic. Moreover, a climate of fear, fostered by Stalin himself, must have
contributed to the final decision. In any event, the Symphony, denied its premiere in
1936, found its way to colleagues and students by way of the composer’s own version
for two pianos. The reasons for making a transcription of an orchestral work are
varied. Historically, piano versions of Nineteenth Century orchestral music abound
because, in the absence of recorded media or an adequate local orchestra, it was the
only way many people could become familiar with the repertoire. Even, at their best
though, few would prefer to hear a Liszt piano transcription of a Beethoven symphony
or Wagner overture to the orchestral originals (the “paraphrases” are a different
matter). In the Twentieth Century, with the advent of recorded sound, radio, and
better travel, the piano transcription was no longer so necessary to disseminate the
orchestral repertoire to remote communities. That they continued to be made gives a
strong indication of the appetite for domestic music making at the piano that
continued to exist through to at least the second half of the last century. For some
composers, most notably Ravel, works mutate from piano to orchestra and from
orchestra to piano so naturally it is often hard to remember which came first. With
Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony it was assumed that the two-piano version (made at
the same time as the Symphony in 1936) existed solely to give musicians an
opportunity to hear the music denied an orchestral premiere. It does beg the question
why the two versions were written concurrently as the decision to withdraw the
Symphony was made at the eleventh hour. Moreover, it was not his normal practice to
make piano versions of his Symphonies (the Tenth Symphony is the only other
instance as far as I know). The loss of the manuscript of the full score during the
Second World War and the publication in 1946 of the two-piano arrangement in a
limited edition of 300 copies (in Moscow) reinforces my belief that the piano version
was considered by Shostakovich, strong enough to stand on its own. Eventually, in
1960, the composer’s assistant, Lev Atovmyan, discovered a set of parts from which
the Philharmonic’s chief librarian, Boris Shalman, was able to reconstruct the original
score. The symphony received its belated premiere in 1961 under Kondrashin and the
official Soviet Russian publication of the full score the following year closed the
long-standing and embarrassing gap in the composer’s numbered symphonies.
The two-piano arrangement is a “straight” transcription of the orchestral version.
Certain orchestral effects, often involving percussion, do not make it into the twopiano score: the most significant omission being the haunting woodblock motif in the
coda of the second movement. It is also disappointing to hear the flute’s eerie fluttertongued B flat (figure 88 for twenty-eight bars) replaced by an octave tremolo on the
piano. One could continue in similar vein but would then miss the virtues of this
transcription. The greater clarity and immediacy of two pianos allows us to focus on
the contrapuntal power of this music. The great fugue in the first movement was a
source of anxiety to me and my duo partner (Rustem Hayroudinoff) during our
preparation for the premiere recording (Chandos 10296). The composer, and former
student and close friend of Shostakovich, Boris Tishchenko, had told us of a student
who had literally gone mad trying to learn the fugue. We lamented the absence of
those orchestral effects that mark the way through this labyrinth of relentless
counterpoint (cymbal crashes do not easily transfer to the piano). We lost track of the
number of times we inexplicably drifted apart during the storm but when we finally
learnt how to count two in a bar we found that the fugue was even more extraordinary
than we had remembered it from its orchestral incarnation. This experience is
comparable to finding Mussorgsky’s “Great Gates of Kiev” more monumental in the
piano original than in Ravel’s famous transcription. In this case the music becomes
more feverish and through its Nancarrow like complexity, more overwhelming. Of
course, given the choice, the symphony should be heard “live” in its orchestral garb
but, failing that, a live performance of the two-piano arrangement is preferable to a
recording of an orchestra simply because so much is lost in the process of squeezing
an orchestral sound through a pair of speakers. In any event the composer seems to
have put his faith in the two-piano arrangement as an ambassador for the symphony,
since, in 1945, Shostakovich and his close colleague Moisey Vainberg gave---in
Laurel Fay’s words---‘a powerful reading’ of this arrangement to an important group
of colleagues in order to further the cause of its public release.
The Fourth Symphony marked the end of an important period in Shostakovich’s life.
It did not, however, mark the end of his interest in modernity. The Fifth Symphony,
the object of intense scrutiny in both Soviet Russia and The West, is a work
remarkably free from any obvious traces of modernism. Opinion has always been
divided as to the merit and meaning of the work and this is not the place to contribute
to that debate. In the broader context of his output though, the contrast between the
Fourth and Fifth Symphonies is no more extreme than that between several other pairs
of roughly contemporaneous works one might wish to choose. Out of necessity
Shostakovich had to turn his hand to different styles; from important public
Symphonies to incidental music for Theatre and Film. Out of choice he explored the
string quartet, song cycles and other more intimate forms and, as a composer, he took
pride in being able to adapt his craft as the occasion demanded. Moreover, both
historical forces and his own temperament lead him to reconcile the conflicting
strands of musical thought developed in his formative years. This process is already
apparent in the Fourth Symphony. Whereas the First Piano Sonata is relentlessly
modernistic, almost atonal, (Leonid Nikolayev, Shostakovich’s revered piano teacher,
commented after the first performance, ‘Is this a piano sonata? No, it is a sonata for
the metronome to the accompaniment of the piano’) The Fourth Symphony juxtaposes
music of wildly diverse styles from powerfully dissonant counterpoint to Mahlerian
schmaltz and parodies of popular dances, and significantly ends with an haunting
coda built on a chord of C minor. Shostakovich was never going to follow the path of
Schoenberg and abandon tonality even had he lived in the West. He did, however, use
the dissonant fruits of atonality when he deemed it appropriate as in the following
examples (1-3) all drawn from the piano music. At the other end of the spectrum he
could find inspiration in the simplest diatonic harmony (examples 4 & 5). He was able
to forge a coherent and individual musical language from disparate elements in much
the same way that Bach synthesised the different national styles of the late Baroque in
his instrumental suites.
The influence of Bach is most evident in the Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues
Op.87. In 1950 Shostakovich attended the celebrations in Leipzig commemorating the
two-hundredth anniversary of the death of Bach. According to his close friend Isaak
Glickman, Shostakovich talked endlessly of his love for Bach “as a rare human being,
a phenomenal craftsman---Shostakovich insisted on this---and musician of genius”.
He was also inspired by the pianist Tatyana Nikolayeva, who had brilliantly
performed the cycle of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues at the celebrations. This was the
genesis of Shostakovich’s own conception of a set of twenty-four preludes and
fugues, on which he worked in the summer of 1950. Touchingly, Shostakovich begins
his cycle with same five notes that Bach uses at the start of ‘The Forty-Eight’
(example 5). A simple C major chord reaffirmed the power of tonality at a time when
many important composers in the West saw no future in such music. The fugue goes
even further; there are no accidentals in this intense polyphony that seems to exist
somewhere between a Palestrina Mass and the adagio episodes in Beethoven’s
‘Heiliger Dankgesang’. There are many other nods in the direction of Bach. Some,
like the prelude of the A major (No.7) or the fugue of the E major (No.9), remind us
of Bach through the character of the thematic material. Others, like the prelude of the
C sharp minor (No.10) or the B minor (No.6), clearly borrow some formal aspect of
the older master’s work (the former is indebted to Bach’s E flat Major Book 1 and the
latter has the dotted rhythms of a French Overture). The key schemes of Op.87 and
his earlier set of Twenty-Four Preludes Op.34, however, comes from Chopin’s
Twenty-Four Preludes Op.28 rather than Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier (a circle of
fifths interspersed with their relative minors, thus C major, A minor, G major, E
minor etc.). Shostakovich’s cycle is more than just an “homage” to Bach. It is rightly
considered a great landmark of the 20th Century piano repertoire. While it is not
ground breaking in the manner of John Cage’s music for prepared piano or innovative
in terms of keyboard technique, like Ligeti’s Etudes, it is an epic musical experience
that conveys much of Shostakovich’s emotional world. The tendency for pianists to
“cherry pick” the most effective numbers from the cycle to create small groups of
Preludes and Fugues for inclusion in recital programmes is entirely understandable
but also regrettable. For an audience to sit through the best part of three hours of
preludes and fugues requires a leap of faith on their part and an enormous amount of
preparation from the pianist. But I am convinced that the work was intended to be
heard as a cycle and in listening this way the whole is greater than the sum of the
parts. For example, the F sharp major fugue is thought by some to be one of the
weaker fugues in the set. Heard in context; after the turbulent G sharp minor fugue
and the pastoral F sharp major prelude, and before the operatically dramatic E flat
minor Prelude; the F sharp fugue’s deceptive simplicity achieves a meditative calm.
Out of context, it sounds a little banal. The same can (and has) been said about certain
passages within the symphonies but no one would dream of detaching them from their
‘context’. To date, there have been remarkably few pianists willing to tackle the
complete cycle. Given the growing popularity of Shostakovich’s music in general it
cannot be long before more pianists rise to the challenge. Glenn Gould once wrote of
Liszt and Prokofiev that their piano music was ‘maximum effect for a minimum of
effort’. By comparison, Shostakovich’s piano music is much less concerned with
pianistic effect than with musical argument. Like Bach’s keyboard music it offers the
performer a great deal of freedom to ‘interpret’. There are surprisingly few dynamics
or other expression markings in the score. Confirmation perhaps that Shostakovich
trusted his interpreters to find their own way with his music. We should return the
compliment. Thus it is my hope that, following the wonderful example of Tatiana
Nikolaeva, pianists will see in this cycle and in his other works for piano, an unjustly
neglected repertoire and in this centenary year of Shostakovich’s birth, will join me in
trying to bring this music to a wider audience.